21 landing page tips shared in #CROchat this year

Image created by #CROchat contributor, @gatzseoIt’s been eight months since we all started gathering on Thursdays at 10am PT/ 1pm ET to discuss conversion optimization in #CROChat. We’ve shared advice on testing, design, personas and more in both the lead gen and ecommerce spaces. And now it’s time to step back and reflect.

#CROchat will be taking a brief pause through the end of the year, and will return with fresh energy and ideas in 2011. That doesn’t mean though we shouldn’t still use the #CROchat tag to talk with each other and share conversion marketing tips. We must never stop sharing and learning! I’ll still frequently be using the #CROChat hashtag and hope you will too.

Here are 21 of my favorite landing page tips shared in #CROchat this year:

1. Some very important things to measure on the landing page include: time spent on page, registration numbers, behaviors (both that lead to conversions and bounces), keyword performance, and number of pages per visit.
2. Some key micro-conversions to track: downloads, social engagements, and video views.
3. To track conversions that take place offline you can use: coupons, promo codes, and tracked phone numbers. You should also train your sales reps to track this kind of info.
4. Getting the wrong people to bounce is a good thing!
5. Test what you measure and see how that impacts the evolution of your campaigns.
6. Conversion rate optimization and SEO balance each other out. 
7. SEO should be followed up by conversion rate optimization. Rankings lead to site traffic, but site traffic does not always lead to conversions.
8. Highly specific conversion bait is likely to be much more specific than link bait.
9. Landing page pet peeves: wrong message, information overload, and poor design.
10. When implementing video, beware of auto-play and make sure your video loads quickly and smoothly.
11. Homemade videos don’t seem to hurt conversions. Test them!
12. When working within a shopping cart, only ask for what you need and store addresses in user accounts when possible.
13. Using a progress bar will help set user expectations when dealing with both multi-part forms and shopping carts.
14. Monitoring Average Order Value (AOV) helps show the quality not just quantity of online sales.
15. Data transparency works when it’s understandable by all and impartial; filtered data is always skewed.
16. Testing price points on the landing page is important because value is in the eye of the beholder.
17. After “what’s in it for me?” the most important question is, “how much?”
18. When it comes to price on the web, the competitor’s price is a search away.
19. Include trust elements and social proof on your landing page to increase conversions.
20. Segment your visitors to increase your ability to provide really targeted information and offers.
21. Analyzing behavioral analytics gives us insight into user behaviors that lead to and away from conversions.

I’m sure we’ll still see each other around the #CROchat watering hole during the next couple of months, and I’ll definitely still be tweeting with you about landing pages from the @ioninteractive account.

Happy tweeting and in the words of frequent #CROchat contributor, Carey Gatz: cro rulez.

Jim Sterne to host #CROchat on November 4th

I’m very pleased to announce that Jim Sterne, founder of the eMetrics conference, president and chairman of the Web Analytics Association, and author of several online marketing books, will be hosting #CROchat on November 4th. 

I was lucky enough to meet Jim at eMetrics/Conversion Conference D.C. earlier this month, at which time Jim graciously agreed to host our weekly Twitter chat about Conversion Rate Optimization (#CROchat). 

During the next week, feel free to leave a comment here or tweet to me @ioninteractive or Jim @JimSterne if there is anything in particular you would like to discuss at the November 4th #CROchat.

For those who will be joining us for the first time, in #CROchat we discuss how to improve landing page conversion rates (both e-commerce and lead generation) through testing and analysis. Common questions surround:

• Landing page design
• How SEO and CRO should work together
• How to integrate online and offline marketing

If you’ve never joined us before, or if you’re frequently a silent participant watching from afar, November 4th is the perfect time to jump right in. 

#CROchat begins promptly at 1pm ET / 10 am PT. We recommend using tweetchat.com to follow along with the conversation.

5 Things you can do with call tracking to help your conversion rate

This is a guest post by Kathleen Colan, director of marketing and content for Mongoose Metrics (www.mongoosemetrics.com), an enterprise-level call tracking and conversion analytics provider based in Cleveland, Ohio.  

Do you know which marketing sources send the most phone calls to your business every day, every week, every year?  Are your pay-per-click keywords making the phone ring? Or could it be the banner campaign you’re running on a content network?  The rumblings you may have heard are true: call tracking reveals granular data – down to the PPC keyword level – about what sources drive phone leads. 

Whether you’re spending $600 a month on marketing or six figures, it’s imperative to know how your online marketing efforts effect your offline sales conversions (phone leads). 

Let’s face it; people still like to use the telephone to do business.  In fact, 46 percent of local online searchers say they contact a business by telephone following their Web research (2009 TMP Directional and comScore study).   

Call tracking is one solution to answer the question: “Where are these calls coming from?” Today’s call tracking software does all the heavy lifting by identifying a valuable cache of data about customer browsing all the way through to the completed sale.  As a result, you’re able to immediately identify high-performing advertising vehicles and scrap the dead weight.

It works simply when a customer calls your business from a dynamic phone number on your website.  Once the call is dialed, the tracking software places a cookie on the caller’s browser enabling you to follow their entire click path from start to finish.  As a result of understanding this data, you’ll be able to modify your marketing spending as well as optimize your existing website marketing to target marketing vehicles with higher conversion rates – whether those conversions come from web forms or from the telephone. 

Five Things You Should Do with Call Tracking:

• Provision local and/or toll-free numbers: Toll-free numbers convey a national presence and local phone numbers speak to hyper-local communities.  A good call tracking provider should offer both. 
• Integrate call tracking data in Google Adwords: Quickly and easily aggregate phone call conversions alongside online conversions for a complete picture of online spending within the Google Adwords Placement Performance Report dashboard. 
• Control the data: Features such as interactive voice response (IVR) and ROI feedback tools let clients enter data related to the phone call for use in later correlation. 
• Investigate international call tracking: If you have an international presence, choose a vendor capable of provisioning phone numbers across the borders. 
• Integrate phone call data with web analytics, customer relationship management (CRM) and bid management systems: Today’s advanced platforms allow you to view call tracking data inside web analytics packages such as Webtrends, Omniture and Google Analytics as well as CRM software (Sugar, SalesForce and Microsoft CRM along with bid management providers such as Acquisio, Kenshoo and Marin Software.  

To learn more about call tracking analytics and offline conversions, you should follow @Mongoosemetrics on Twitter!

Guessing & testing your way to breakthrough conversion results

I read a fantastic post this morning by Michael Fertik for the Harvard Business Review. I see the post, Hire Great Guessers, as another confirmation that the best marketing blends art & science. I share Kertik’s opinion that when we couple insightful guessing with skillful testing we’ll find better customer insight than if we do one without the other. I don’t love the word ‘guessing’, but I like the premise—good marketing doesn’t always come from scientific evaluation of the data. It’s the art side of marketing—the magic that comes together for a winning strategy & execution that gets results.

The article’s main idea is that if you “test a bad premise, your analytics will be pretty useless.” Instead, you must make “the jump from discovery to optimization” with good guesses. Fertik writes, “Good guessers know what is worth investigating in the first place.” Once you determine what is worthy of investigating, then you begin testing.

In the conversion optimization world, companies who only focus on the rigor of analytics often fail to move their conversion rate up, or they only move up a little.  On the flipside, companies who only run with their gut often miss out on great optimization opportunities that would have presented themselves if they had taken a dive into the numbers.  

The way I see it, it’s a combination of great ‘guesses’ and accessible, digestible testing data that comes together for breakthrough business results. 

What do you think? Does guessing have a place in business analysis?

Just a reminder: conversion rate optimization isn't all about numbers

To the majority of the world, marketing is all about pretty colors, persuasive copy, and hot pictures.  Consumers rarely think about the behind the scenes stuff we’re so obsessed with. The numbers, the algorithms, the calculations, the obsession with looking at funky colored blobs on a screen that show us eye tracking.

We can get so entrenched in our analytics, we temporarily forget that numbers and blobs don’t convert users, they just give us insight into what does convert users. 

Focusing on the creative

The creative is important because it is one of the major things that sets your product apart from your close competitors; it’s the face of your company. The algorithms, calculations, and the person doing the number crunching all make up the brains of the operation. 

Consumers talk to your face, not your brain. 

In a blog post written almost two years ago, Scott asks, “What if marketing was completely optimized and automated?” Think about it. In a perfectly optimized world: 1. well, you would probably be out of your current job, but 2. how the heck would you gain your competitive advantage? Through the face of the operation, right? The creative.  

Scott writes that even if you have the better product or service, you still have to figure out how to convey that in the right way. 

He says it would come down to, “marketing strategy and creative. Fresh concepts. Bold moves. Beautiful, brilliant, passionate, inspiring, original ideas that simply can’t be manufactured by an algorithm.”

…this is just a reminder that the conversion team has to be multidisciplinary.

Analytics, strategy and creative - the brains and the face - all have to work together.